


Waiting for You to Come Home

by Mogadorian_Wolf



Category: The Lorien Legacies - Pittacus Lore
Genre: Caramel apples, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 09:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6112561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mogadorian_Wolf/pseuds/Mogadorian_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patricia Goode cries over a picture of Malcolm and Sam, while she's waiting for them to come home from the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting for You to Come Home

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Photograph by Ed Sheeran. If people are interested I'll write more Goode family stories involving caramel apples

It was so quiet in the house- had been since Sam had been taken from her. All the noise happened outside, and sometimes that got loud enough to block the quiet inside. The world had fallen apart since she’d last seen or even heard from Sam, her baby. Malcolm was still alive, or he had been before the war. It was highly possible that neither Malcolm nor Sam Goode would make it home at all; they were fighting an alien war with impossible odds.

Patricia Goode sat at the small kitchen table with her head in her hands. She looked so much older than her actual age. The alien invasion and subsequent war had taken its toll on her. Her hair has gone completely gray, frizzled and unkempt. Heavy bags hang under her eyes, indicating how long it had been since she had really slept. Her clothes hung off her thin frame. She seemed on the edge of starvation even with the fridge fully stocked. In the background the T.V plays voicing the final war with trembling, hopeful voices, but Patricia doesn’t pay attention to any of it. She hasn’t really listened to it since the first day. It doesn’t take the unbearable quiet away.

In front of her sits a picture of happier times. It used to be in a photo album that Sam kept in his room, but she’d taken out after the war had started. She stares at it intently, as if she only stares hard enough then she can go back to that moment, before everything came crashing down around her. Both Sam and Malcolm are with her in the picture; they’re all holding onto each other, laughing and smiling at the fall festival. It was right before Malcolm disappeared, but none of them sensed in on the horizon, the future didn’t bother them.

Sam was ten with a half-eaten caramel apple in his hand, his mouth and hands all sticky from the caramel. She’d protested at first at Malcolm buying their son such a sticky treat. He’d just laughed at her, telling her that caramel apples were a classic, Sam had to have some. It’d been the treat he’d bought them on their first date; the treat they had on every anniversary; it was their cake. His cake had just sealed the deal on Sam getting his own caramel apple.

Malcolm always had that sweet, easily excitable nature. He reminded her of an overgrown puppy without all the licking- he did kissing people style and only for her. It was what had drawn her to him in the first place. She only wished that he would’ve dropped his obsession with extraterrestrial life. Everything could’ve turned out so differently. It didn’t matter if he’d been right, not at the price of having her boys taken from her for an alien war they might not even win.

She was crying again. Remembering seemed to do that more and more to her lately. Patricia sighed, getting up and turning on the player to some soft song. Whenever she started crying it always signaled that she should do something different, get her mind off the past; she couldn’t live there, and it just meant she had to do something with the present.

Her hair went up in a messy bun- contained, but just barely. She no longer cared about little things like that, anymore. It was close to five, and she always started cooking dinner at this time. There was really no one to cook dinner beside herself, and the fridge was so filled with leftovers that she didn’t really need to make anything for several weeks- family or not. She did it anyways. It was a way of keeping her mind off of what was happening outside the quiet house, of what was probably happening to her boys. 

Cooking dinner was the only semblance of normal she could cling to while she waited for her boys to come, if they ever came home. She had dreams sometimes of cooking forever, of her boys coming home in boxes and she kept on cooking convinced they’d be home any minute ready to eat dinner. They were more like nightmares, but she didn’t want to face that.

Before she could start on dinner, the doorbell rings, startling her. The bell hasn’t rung in years. It’s been as silent as the voices, as the house. Curious, she dries her hands and goes to answer it. Some part of her hopes it’ll be her boys, smiling like they were only gone a weekend. The other part its some unknown soldier coming to inform her that her boys won’t be coming home again.

Heart in her chest, she pulls the door open. Her two boys stand there, grubby and battered looking, but alive and safe. If she thought she was crying before, than she’s really unprepared for the flood that pours out of her eyes at seeing them. She throws the screen door open, dragging both of them into a tight embrace. If she only holds them tight enough, she won’t lose them again. She won’t wake up to find this is all some twisted dream that only serves to break her further. They hesitantly and gently pat her back, returning the embrace.

“The war’s over, Mom. We won. We really won,” Sam told her softly, finally holding her as tight as she’s holding him. Malcolm pulled away, his eyes shining with that little half smile of his that makes her breath catch. Before she can get it back, he’s kissing her. She throws her arms around him, and Sam laughs beside them.

Malcolm slowly pulls away, breathless that heart-racing grin still on his face, “I think this calls for some caramel apples.”

It startles a laugh at her, and she reluctantly pulled out of his hold, still half-afraid that they’ll disappear if she turns her back on them. She grabs her coat, wanting to grab theirs as well, make sure they’re all bundled up, but it’ll put them out of her sight for too long.

“Then let’s not waste any time. Caramel apples are calling our names.” And for the first time in a long time, she’s not waiting. They’ve come home. The house isn’t quiet anymore, and she feels like she’s just come home, too.


End file.
